الموضوع: got myself a front strut bar

i have got a front strut bar for the woo... actually it was a gift from my very good friend Ehab BOB (thank you very much Ehab for the great gift :D )

i have done the installation myself and it is easy as hell but that is not the important part.... the important part is the contribution of that this simple bar to the handling of the car







at the very first turn i have noticed that their is less body roll and that gave me the courage to push it hard on the next corners to see how well is this thing... the body roll was some 50% less than before... also the car felt like it is more ridged and "one piece" if you know what i mean. this gave me the confidence to push the car harder into corners and it seems the car does like that now... in the old days if i want hard in a corner i got horrible wheel squealing sounds and the passenger would end up on my lap (or me in his lap of it was a left corner).. now all that is gone

i still haven't done a really satisfactory test for this upgrade as i have on course in mind that will test the cornering performance indeed... it is a 2.5 down hill road full of tricky curves and represents the ultimate handling tester for us here.

i also felt it is going better over bumps in straight lines which seemed strange to me but after reading more about strut bars i realized it adds to the spring rates and thus gives the feel of stiffer suspension... also stability under straight line braking improved which was a bit strange for me too as i was under the impression that the strut brace will add to cornering performance only

actually i was a bit worried as the level of improvement this thing added to the car's handling made me think i got something wrong with the car and the strut bar cured it but from previous feedback i found on the internet i can see that this is almost the same experience every one else had with the strut brace... even Zorex my personal test driver was impressed with the handling performance of the Woo after the installation of the brace... he was giving me hard time because of the amount of body roll i have - he got a BMW E36 with adjustable Koni suspension and 225/40/17 tires so anything else rolls for him - but after a test drive in my car he was impressed with the improvement made by the bar.

in my opinion this thing should be an OEM part on all cars as it really adds to the handling of the car and i don't think it is too expensive to have so why not have it as standard???... since it is not a standard part then by all means i strongly recommends this upgrade for anyone seeping handling performance 8)

one last thing: i was stupid enough to install the bar backwards... yes the lanos bar is directional so that it clears the coolant reservoir... the coolant reservoir part of the bar is actually bent twice so their is two little angles to make the inclination of the bar a bit smooth at the reservoir area and make sufficient clearance around the reservoir.

when i had the bar the wrong way i was going "oh shit... this is going to be super tight fitment" and i actually had to tilt the coolant hose clamp to clear the bar... but yesterday i was looking at the bar and noticed the two bends on the opposite side - again i thought the bar was defective or so - but then realized the reason behind the two bends.

here are the pics for the "before" and "after":





MMamdouh